No Love for Jacksonians

Via AVI's comments section, an article by Emily Ekins and Jonathan Haidt on how to apply their proposed division of 'moral tastes' to the Presidential campaign. They call this Moral Foundations Theory, and I assume it is well enough known to anyone who spent time at Cassandra's place or who currently does at AVI's. If that isn't you, there's an adequate introduction to the theory in the article.

What strikes me immediately about their study is that they ran these three traits together "for simplicity's sake."

Loyalty/betrayal: We keep track of who is "us" and who is not; we enjoy tribal rituals, and we hate traitors.

Authority/subversion: We value order and hierarchy; we dislike those who undermine legitimate authority and sow chaos.

Sanctity/degradation: We have a sense that some things are elevated and pure and must be kept protected from the degradation and profanity of everyday life. (This foundation is best seen among religious conservatives, but you can find it on the left as well, particularly on issues related to environmentalism.)

They say that they ran these three things together as an average for the purposes of their study because, taken together, they are the 'foundation of social conservatism.'

You probably all know what I'm going to say about this, but I'll say it anyway. In the interest of reaching younger readers, I'll explain the position using memes I have recently seen on Facebook.

Where does a Jacksonian stand on loyalty versus betrayal?

Where does a Jacksonian stand on sanctity?

Where does a Jacksonian stand on authority?

And one more that's NSFW below the jump. The point is, if you run these things together, you've missed the point for a major part of the American political tradition. It's not a dead letter, either. I've seen all these memes on Facebook in the last few weeks.

This is who we think we are. If you're not looking for it, you can't see it.

38 comments:

Well, yes anti-authoriarian to men or governments operating on the rule of their self interest. Very much authoritarian with regards to the laws of nature and of nature's God. It's not a question of authority vs. Anarchy for most, it's a question as to the proper seat of authority.

Yes, a kind of instinctive bristling in response to being pushed around, combined with a willingness to obey in a relationship of appropriate respect and shared goals. Not that a dyed-in-the-wool progressive doesn't have a rebellious response to being bullied, but I suppose it more characteristically takes the form of demanding protection from a benevolent system, and less in the form of a willingness to announce that one will fight and suffer the risk of harm or death rather than submit. Less Gandhi, more Occupy America.

I acknowledge that what a progressive probably sees, when viewing images like the above, is Nazis and the KKK. I just see neighbors who will rouse themselves in response to threat like an anthill that's just been kicked. Our version of "No Justice, No Peace."

ITEM 1. In general, if a political movement can be accurately summed up on a bumper sticker or by Facebook memes.... well, I don't really know quite what to say about that.

But I'll try anyway (you knew this was coming - admit it :p).

If a political movement can be accurately summed up on a bumper sticker or by Facebook memes, it's more likely based on a loose amalgamation of emotion and fuzzy "things we like" - not on any kind of principles.

It's easy to rally people with non-specific, emotional images. Such a coalition, however, is unlikely to cohere once those troubling specifics rear their ugly heads. Suddenly, what everyone thought they liked/agreed with is revealed not to have been the same in every person's mind.

ITEM 2. Speaking of principles/policies, here are the major ones I remember being associated with Jacksonian democracy. I'm not sure what the modern equivalents would be here (I suppose I'm asking you what the answer to that would be)?

1. Expanding the franchise to non-land owning white men and increasing participatory government (except for item 5 below, which had precisely the opposite effect). Women, Indians, and slaves were still SOL.

2. Opposing a national bank (or any centralized monetary authority). I was taught in school that Jackson's dissolution of the national bank and the resulting dependence on state run banks (who, with no one to regulate them, reduced their reserves to unsafe levels) destabilized the economy and contributed to widespread economic instability and the multiple panics that plagued the country during the 1800s.

3. Expansion of slavery (again, don't let that pesky central govt. tell the states what to do). Even on a matter of fundamental human freedoms.

4. Westward expansion, achieved by forcibly relocating/killing those who were already living in the desired territories.

5. Weakening Congress and strengthening the executive branch and the President. Hard for me to imagine you supporting this, Grim. But it was a cornerstone of the Jacksonian movement.

I think there's a great danger in whitewashing history -in the old rear view mirror, things look quite different and details get airbrushed away.

What would modern Jacksonian democracy look like? If it's not anything like historical Jacksonianism, why call it that at all?

The reason that this struck me as a useful way to proceed is that Haidt et al are talking about unconscious, often emotional motivations. This is the one time when Facebook memes and bumper stickers might really bear some insight. A carefully formulated, rational argument isn't going to reveal the underlying emotional responses that are driving the reaction.

So, in other words, I picked this mode mostly because it really lets us get at the question they are interested in. Does a positive appreciation for authority align unconsciously/emotionally with a love of loyalty or a strong feeling for the sacred? Their suggestion is, in modern conservatism, that yes: it really does.

My suggestion is that they're missing something pretty huge in the American electorate. The Jacksonian tradition does indeed fuse love of loyalty and a strong sense of sacred values that must not be transgressed. But it splits on authority. Rather, if we are talking about emotional responses and unconscious preferences, they're in general highly suspicious of authority and take pride in being ready to rebel at the slightest transgression.

I can answer your second question, if you want, but it might properly belong in another post. All I'm trying to take on here is a refutation of Haidt's understanding that it's reasonable to fuse those three concerns and treat them as a unified whole. That may be true for many conservatives, but it isn't going to be true for Jacksonians. I take the FB memes not only to establish that, but also to show that this is a going concern (and not merely a historical part of the American electorate that is now not important).

Again, Cass, I'm citing these things not to give insight into the history, nor to give a formal argument for a position. I'm citing them to give insight into the kind of hidden motivations that Haidt is talking about. It's of course true that many Founders were lawyers, and that others had made careers in politics. Others were not, of course -- Sam Adams was a brewer, Patrick Henry was a silversmith, and George Washington was a surveyor.

The point of these images is to get at the problem Haidt is talking about. Has he correctly fused the underlying motivations, or do they come apart? I think these images show that, in the hearts of this section of the electorate, they really strongly come apart.

George Washington was essentially a military officer (French/Indian war) and then a farmer for a brief interlude. But it was in that military capacity that he entered politics.

Anyway, I'm not sure that I agree that it isn't valid to combine the 3 moral senses (loyalty, hierarchy, and sanctity) if - as I take is the case here - their magnitude is relatively smaller that the others AND they tend to cluster anyway (IOW, if you are a social conservative, scoring high in one usually means you score high in all 3).

Yes, there are some subtle effects that will be lost by doing so - that seems fairly straightforward. But if you're looking for a fairly simple prediction model that is better than others, it may be "good enough".

I'm not inclined to argue that the model wouldn't be better if it considered all the moral foundations. What I'm saying is that it's not invalid, just because it lumps 3 of them together.

I think it's not a subtle effect. W. R. Mead has been attributing Donald Trump's position to what he calls Jacksonian tendencies in America. Haidt is trying to analyze whether Trump's support comes, as one of his fellow psychologists argued in a piece to which he links, from 'authoritarianism.' And he ends up deciding that these people are indeed authoritarians: "Voters who still score high on authority/loyalty/sanctity and low on care — even after accounting for all the demographic variables — are significantly more likely to vote for Donald Trump. These are the true authoritarians — they value obedience while scoring low on compassion."

The problem is that the one of the trio that drops out for Jacksonians IS "authority." So we're in a position in which some part of Trump's support -- the part W. R. Mead is citing, and which these FB memes suggest is pretty real -- is being analyzed as "authoritarian" when in fact they're tempermentally inclined in just the opposite direction.

What strikes me as much more likely is that there is a big split in Trump's support that is masked by this methodology. You could disaggregate the true authoritarians -- those conservatives for whom the three traits really are fused -- from the Jacksonians. If you're trying to prevent a Trump victory, or to help another better candidate attain victory, that split is big news.

And Patrick Henry was a lawyer/politician :p Another House of Burgesses type with an active political career.

I think the silversmith you're thinking of was Paul Revere (note that both Washington's and Revere's claim to being founding fathers is based more upon their military exploits than anything else).

As you can no doubt tell, I really, really dislike the Facebook meme mode of political commentary. It papers over crucial distinctions, much as the anti-war Left's bumpersticker activism did during the Evil Bu$Hitler Era :p

On your other point, I don't really understand this:

Rather, if we are talking about emotional responses and unconscious preferences, they're in general highly suspicious of authority and take pride in being ready to rebel at the slightest transgression.

That doesn't seem to describe historical Jacksonianism, which insofar as I can see was just fine with authority so long as it remained within a group they identified with. But that's pretty much true of EVERY political movement - they're not terribly worried about their fellow travelers being in charge :p

So that doesn't make them stand out to me, but I may very well be missing something here. I already admit this is a POV I don't really understand, and which does not seem intellectually consistent to me.

That doesn't seem to describe historical Jacksonianism, which insofar as I can see was just fine with authority so long as it remained within a group they identified with.

For that to work, you'd have to define "group they identified with" very tightly. It would not be enough to say 'propertied white men,' for example. It would have to be a lot tighter.

I would reason from specific Jacksonians like James Jackson. He was a Founder in his way, although mostly at the state level, and he rebelled not only against the King of England but against the governing coalition (of fellow propertied white men) in Georgia over a matter of principle in the Yazoo land scheme. He wasn't one to say, 'Well, the legal forms have been obeyed, and the government has determined that X, so...' He immediately set about changing it, fighting four duels in the process.

Or Andrew Jackson himself, who devoted himself to destroying the National Bank because he thought it was an unacceptably powerful institution. He advanced the power of the Presidency, it is true, but at a time when it was vastly weaker than it is today. Just one example: there were none of the executive regulatory agencies that now do most of the "lawmaking" in the United States. And, as you said yourself, he pushed to rein in Congress, then made up exclusively of what we might ordinarily say was 'the group he identified with,' although that is mostly because we usually talk as if race or sex or wealth were the only important factors. He didn't identify with anyone in Congress, nor as far as I can tell with anyone at all. He was Andrew Jackson, not a token of a type.

The tendency was so strong in the Confederate states that they quite likely lost the war because they wouldn't trust the central government with enough power to even supply its army reliably.

Are these authoritarians? Or are these people loyal to friends and family, but suspicious of distant authority in general? I would say the latter.

Which, by the way, also suggests a split. Tex says she thinks the progressives would see in these images Nazis. They clearly see in Donald Trump a fascist. But there's no danger of Jacksonian fascism: no possibility of a Jacksonian system in which 'everything is for the state, nothing is against the state, nothing is without the state.' Whatever may be wrong with the Jacksonians, they aren't going to buy into a system like that. They are the ones who would fight hardest, and first, against such a system.

Well, I wouldn't expect a Jacksonian to identify with propertied white men - after all, they wanted to expand the franchise beyond propertied white men.

As to this, I'm not sure that doesn't apply to Democrats as well:

He wasn't one to say, 'Well, the legal forms have been obeyed, and the government has determined that X, so...' He immediately set about changing it,

They fight to change laws they don't like, but accept laws they do like. That said, it is unclear to me how fighting duels effectively changes the law (or amounts to fighting unjust laws).

The tendency was so strong in the Confederate states that they quite likely lost the war because they wouldn't trust the central government with enough power to even supply its army reliably.

Which says a lot, doesn't it? Even after repeated demonstrations of why a weak central government left the nation unable to defend herself, the Confederacy didn't learn from experience. Even recent experience.

None of which leaves me feeling confident that Jacksonian democracy is the answer to any of the problems we face. The States aren't going to support the US military, absent a strong enough national government. Why is that attitude a *good* thing, Grim?

James Jackson was the founder of the Democratic Party in Georgia, so that's not very surprising.

Even after repeated demonstrations of why a weak central government left the nation unable to defend herself, the Confederacy didn't learn from experience.

In fairness, they were facing an extraordinarily powerful, centralized state bent on their destruction. That's not the normal condition -- it's not our condition now, for example. We have enemies, and some of them would like our destruction, but they are not dangerous on the same order. It's not clear we couldn't defend ourselves against the threats we face today without a centralized mega-state.

In any case, you're arguing as if I were proposing that we adopt a Jacksonian platform. I've only been arguing that Haidt's conception leaves out a major section of the electorate, and leads him to an erroneous conclusion about the nature of his political opposition. If Mead is right that Jacksonians in general are supporting Trump, then I'm against their program of the moment even though I am, in the 'tribal' sense he talks about, definitely one of them.

You, by contrast, are definitely not. By Haidt's argument, it should be impossible for us to agree because our moral tastes are different. Yet I think we're aligned on the question that Trump is not the answer to any of the problems facing the country. I love the Jacksonians, although AVI is right to say that they've generally been the enemy of everything the country today likes to identify as "progress." I can still say that they're not right in this case, or in any discrete case where there's a good argument to be made against it.

Loyalty/betrayal: We keep track of who is "us" and who is not; we enjoy tribal rituals, and we hate traitors.As do those on the other side of the aisle. Black and Hispanic conservatives are considered traitors. Because all the Democrats do is supposed to be for minorities, minorities are expected to side with Democrats. Ditto those who switched political allegiances, such as David Horowitz or Whittaker Chambers. Or myself, for that matter- though I didn't have as far to got as they did.

Authority/subversion: We value order and hierarchy; we dislike those who undermine legitimate authority and sow chaos.As do those on the other side of the aisle. Scientists say, scientific consensus....Vote for the bill so we can find out what's in it: do what SanFran Nan says.

Sanctity/degradation: We have a sense that some things are elevated and pure and must be kept protected from the degradation and profanity of everyday life. (This foundation is best seen among religious conservatives, but you can find it on the left as well, particularly on issues related to environmentalism.)

Not only environmentalism. Consider anti-racism. I, and probably a lot of those on the right, see racism/ethnocentrism as something that is in all of us, as a manifestation of fear of the other. We can control it, but we cannot eliminate it. Those on the left, consider anti-racism a holy grail to which they not can aspire but also achieve- as opposed to their evil political opponents.

While Democrats/liberals/progressives may manifest those three characteristics, they are loathe to admit it. They consider themselves internationalists, so loyalty to the US is verboten to them. They regard themselves as rebels and those who "question authority," so they are loathe to admit that they also are followers. As so many are not churchgoers, they are loathe to admit to sanctity/degradation issues.

Haidt is pretty funny on the issue of when the Left displays moral sentiments that are considered "right-leaning". On sanctity/impurity, the GMO foods controversy is a great example of this. As are being a vegan, vegetarian, etc.

I think Haidt is right when he says progressives elevate the harm/care element above all others, but I agree with you that they display (though not to as great a degree) elements of the other moral dimensions.

The loyalty thing is on display when progressives allow favored groups (usually perceived as powerless or victims) to violate their most sacred beliefs with impunity. Thus, Muslims can actively oppress women and stone gays (but in Republicans, far less serious acts garner harsh condemnation and loathing). Open, blatant misogyny in rap music is winked at (as is anti-gay hatred) because the perpetrators are black.

In any case, you're arguing as if I were proposing that we adopt a Jacksonian platform. I've only been arguing that Haidt's conception leaves out a major section of the electorate

...Well, I'm not convinced that Jacksonians (however defined) are a major section of the electorate! I only hear about them here :) I definitely *have* gotten the feeling you admire/support what you describe as Jacksonians.

... and leads him to an erroneous conclusion about the nature of his political opposition. If Mead is right that Jacksonians in general are supporting Trump

... I don't think he is.

..., then I'm against their program of the moment even though I am, in the 'tribal' sense he talks about, definitely one of them.

What does that mean? You don't agree with them, but you feel some sort of kinship with them? I don't understand, but would like to.

You're right that I deeply distrust populism of what I perceive to be the emotional kind. I think demagoguery short-circuits reason and appeals to tribalism (particularly when it involves tribes who don't share ideas so much as some sort of identity based kinship) are harmful to the American experiment in self government.

I think one of the hardest things about being a responsible human being is learning to balance strong emotion with reason. So I'm never going to like anything I view as emotionally manipulative rhetoric.

I mean sort-of what Haidt means: I have the same "moral tastes," in the sense he means it of morality being analogous to flavors in food. The 'flavors' in those memes appeal to me, even the ones (like the 'outlaw Founders' one) that I recognize intellectually to be at best a highly selective reading of the history, and more likely an expression of a kind of ignorance.

So I can disagree intellectually, and hold reservations; I can also reject a program that violates moral principles I have adopted for reasons that convinced me, even if they violate my 'tastes.'

But I'm descended of "Scotch-Irish" highlanders, that core of support out of which Andrew Jackson himself came. You may not meet them in Maryland much, but you will in north Georgia or western North Carolina or east Tennessee. You'll meet them out west, too, where so much of the population from here went after the Civil War because the economy in the South was destroyed. This culture is the one into which I was born, and which raised and nurtured me, and I have absorbed its tastes in many ways.

Education allows you to think about things, and not merely to react to sensations -- even 'moral taste,' insofar as that analogy holds. It can also allow you to develop different tasts. I like barbecue, but I also like many kinds of foods that weren't native to where I grew up. Travel does this also.

Still and all, I'm recognizably one of them. I bristle at any claims by anyone to have authority over me. I feel a strong sense that sacred things must be defended and protected -- how often have we had the debate about the importance of shielding some things from the effects of the market or the economy? Loyalty and honor matter to me.

Haidt's wrong to run these three things together, but he's not wrong to talk about morality as having a kind of flavor -- and of different cultures having different 'cuisines' which blend the flavors in different ways. That's a useful way to think, although the model isn't as predictive as he thinks it will be.

Interestingly, though, he says that his study shows that Hillary Clinton's support is wholly predicted on demographics -- not moral flavors, which seem to be irrelevant. All the other candidates are supported by people who have 'moral feelings' echoed by the campaigns they are running, but moral feeling apparently plays no part in gaining her support. Perhaps it is because no one believes her claims to hold moral positions, so she is unable to leverage a feeling that she shares our moral sense of right and wrong.

Joseph Bottum makes a further point about the hidden religious sentiments of the secular left in An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America. While a substantial part of the left- perhaps even a majority- sees itself as secular, as not religious, it exhibits beliefs that hearken back to the religious beliefs of their ancestors.

Leftists see themselves as the good people, as anti-racists who love diversity and inclusion [as long as wingnuts are not included]. In the process, they often label their political opponents as evil- in effect, followers of Satan. In a word, leftists see themselves as members of the elect. While their churchgoing ancestors saw church membership and certain religious beliefs as the criteria for belonging to the elect, the secular elect sees membership coming from certain social beliefs and from membership in certain political or social entities.

Are you trying to tell us that all those troublesome human behaviors that the Left is always blaming on religion (because people would *never* behave that way, "but for" the malign influence of religion!!!) may actually just be garden-variety human behaviors that occur with some regularity, even in non-religious types?

UNEXPECTEDLY!!!! :)

Arguably the most delusional belief in lefty circles is that human nature is caused by [insert social institution here], and if we could just abolish [insert social institution here], people would magically stop acting like fallible humans have been acting for centuries.

In fairness, they were facing an extraordinarily powerful, centralized state bent on their destruction.

That must be why Jacksonian Democrats were lynching abolitionists in the North or South, in 1830. 30 years before Lincoln ever came close to the Presidency.

Democrat propaganda and reconstruction of history is quite thorough, even to this century.

As for why the Confederacy lacked industry and supply lines, you don't have supply lines when all your wealth is tied up on slave baron plantations. If the slave baron Jacksonians had followed Jackson's actual virtues, rather than emulate Jackson's vices, the Confederacy would have agrarian farming and industry together. Because industry, paying people a fair wage, was also more efficient, in cities, on docks, and yes even on plantations. An electric generator and motor created by Northern industrialists, GE perhaps, did the work of several million slaves, larger than the entire population of slaves in NA.

If the abolitionists had been trying to destroy the South, advocating the removal of slavery and the industrialization of free work would be the last things someone would do, as that would only aide that slave culture's military supplies. But as I said, Democrat propaganda is very thorough.

We are none of us all that consistent

Don't forget to notice that the balance of power between totalitarian serial killers and their victims are also "not all that consistent". This doesn't make Americans equal, certainly not under an oligarchy.

Ideology can be hand waved away, since deeds are over words. Power is not so easy to hand wave away and ignore, even though humans like to try for decades on end exactly that.

Or are these people loyal to friends and family, but suspicious of distant authority in general?

These were Southern aristocrats. The Slave Barons are the damned Authority. The lesser nobles and upper nobles "always" hated giving power to the centralized king or emperor. Always. Until their power was broken and shattered, then their route to power was in court to the king, the absolute monarchy. When crown authority wasn't absolute and wasn't even enforceable, the nobles had far greater authority in their own realms.

Well, I wouldn't expect a Jacksonian to identify with propertied white men - after all, they wanted to expand the franchise beyond propertied white men.

White people didn't exist back then, Anglo Saxon to English was not the same as Welsh/Irish or Scot or French / Franks.

As for white men without property getting the vote, Jackson had the virtue to extend that, but Jacksonians, his followers or fellows, lacked his virtues but not his vices. And the slave barons ensured that even if men without property had the vote, they did not get to vote their conscience. The land owners were the Boss of those landless whites, and the landless did as they were told, much like serfs.

It isn't backwards, it is called subversion. The methods are well known by now, even the oblivious.

When HIV infects a host, it subverts certain systems to reproduce the virus and also change the hierarchy of the system to obey HIV's instructions, rather than the host's instructions (to defend the host).

If the Left has "become" much like the West's authoritarian systems, it is because they have hijacked and taken it over. But the issue was never the issue. They were never in it for equality or fairness or justice. That was merely the lie to aide in the subversion process, much as HIV the virus manages to fool the host's immune system into thinking HIV is not an enemy. Until it is too late.

It is no more delusional than the belief that the human body's own immune system, intended to safeguard the body, can also be used to destroy the body. Even immunological reactions (allergies) can do that.

Gringo is right of course, and I often mention the Leftist alliance's dogma and evil death cult practices.

As for the initial comments here, there were no "careers" back then. People did whatever they wanted to do. Lawyers were also gunslingers. Doc Holiday was also a healer, as well as gunslinger. These were their careers? No, they just did whatever they wanted to do or could, to feed themselves.

People with education, property, and a certain kind of class or diplomatic skill were chosen to represent their people in another city. The same way self organized groups of humans did with the Tea Party, using the internet and communications. It is completely organic. There was no "license" back then, because there's no way to find out what was fake or not, due to the slow speed of communications and couriers. With no barrier to entry, there can be no career stuck path that people are stuck with. People could and did claim that they had whatever magical exlixers they were selling at the time, that they wanted to. For someone living in or near the bureaucracy of DC's Obey at all costs culture and social "consensus", it is a world beyond the imagination.

All you had back then was your reputation, your personal reputation. Just as if you took a new name online and could only use that, nothing from your "credentials" or personal contacts. And the only way people could judge you was what the person under your cognomen did or said.

As for why the Confederacy lacked industry and supply lines, you don't have supply lines when all your wealth is tied up on slave baron plantations. If the slave baron Jacksonians had followed Jackson's actual virtues, rather than emulate Jackson's vices, the Confederacy would have agrarian farming and industry together.... These were Southern aristocrats. The Slave Barons are the damned Authority.

Andrew Jackson's actual base of support wasn't among what you call "Slave Barons" for the most part, but among the small men across the South and Appalachia. Most of them were interested economically against slavery, as it depressed their wages and led to the concentration of land in plantations (making it harder to survive as a small farmer). There were major political leaders who were both Jacksonians and pro-slavery -- James Jackson himself, in a severe mar on an otherwise outstanding political life -- but there was not unanimity among the Jacksonians as a movement on this point.

What they were unified about was racism, which is why this next statement is not completely accurate:

White people didn't exist back then, Anglo Saxon to English was not the same as Welsh/Irish or Scot or French / Franks.

That statement is true in the North. It is not true in the South. The South's concern about the dangers of a very large minority of its population turning out to murder them in revenge for slavery -- as had recently happened in Haiti -- created a strong sense of "white" in the South in the early 19th century.

It was so strong, in fact, that it overrode other forms of racism and prejudice. Irish Americans arriving especially in the mid-1840s faced strong prejudice in Boston, New York, and elsewhere. In Savannah, that was not the case. The Irish assumed a place among "white" people, chiefly as poor day labor -- slaves were not generally used for really dangerous jobs, as they were an investment, but a poor Irish worker who got killed only cost you the day's wages. Jobs like loading the massive cotton bales down slides onto ships were jobs the Irish could fill.

But they weren't just economically exploited, they were woven into the culture. In Savannah, they were allowed to lay claim to a famous Revolutionary War hero from the sieges of that city, Sergeant Jasper. His monument in Savannah declares him to be "an Irish American," though in fact he was from central Europe. Everyone accepted their adoption of him because it gave them a way to participate in the city's culture and claim to be a legitimate, fully integrated part of Savannah.

Jews, too, were "white" and not subject to the kind of antisemitism that prevailed elsewhere in the 19th century. There are records of Jewish Southern gentlemen fighting duels with non-Jewish gentlemen. That is the clearest evidence you could ask of their integration, as gentlemen dueled only with equals.

By the way, one thing that I think is valuable in Haidt's approach is this idea that some important subset of moral feeling is really a kind of taste. Learning to recognize what your tastes are can be a way of alerting yourself to be suspicious of programs that appeal to those tastes. A critical history of the mistakes the Jacksonians may have made doesn't alter my tastes, but it does help me -- recognizing myself as a member of that American culture -- to identify areas where I need to be particularly careful.

The trend in American politics is the other way: it is to embrace moral tastes as if they were an adequate replacement for ethical or political thought. As this piece suggests, except for Clinton, every candidate's support seems to come from the fact that they appeal to tastes. Clinton's is in a way the most rational: her supporters expect to receive practical rewards in return for their vote.

Cassandra, yes indeed. While I was raised secular, and remain so, I saw early on from exposure to secular versus religious relatives that neither side had a monopoly on either sainthood or sinning. It works both ways.

From what I have seen, religiously oriented persons tend to be more humble than secularly oriented persons. Awe before a Supreme Being tends to produce humility. By comparison, many secular persons are in awe of only themselves. That doesn't produce humility. The result: the belief that Heaven on Earth is just around the corner, if only we enact certain laws or have certain people or political groups governing us.If one law doesn't do the trick, Heaven on Earth will be just around the corner when the next law is passed. Which those on the political Right, be they religious or be they secular, consider nonsense.

They didn't have the internet back then. When the slave lords told the Irish and Scots tribes that foreigners were invading... who were they going to check with? Some of them don't even speak the same language, same as with the natives. Who were they going to go for help if the feds or states screw their deals. Nobody.

Given how much people "think they know now", even with the internet staring them in the face daring them to find out the truth, humans are still weak and pathetic. Just look at them. Look at all the stuff they "know about Oregon" and the "militias". About OIF and Afghanistan under Bush II. Just look at it, it's right online even.

People have no clue, and the issue is always the stuff they think they know, that isn't true.

Sarah Palin said she can see Russia from her house!

That statement is true in the North. It is not true in the South. The South's concern about the dangers of a very large minority of its population turning out to murder them in revenge for slavery -- as had recently happened in Haiti -- created a strong sense of "white" in the South in the early 19th century. ...

That is the clearest evidence you could ask of their integration, as gentlemen dueled only with equals.

A fine example of unity through exploiting an external or internal enemy, one often manufactured by the elites to keep people in check. But this goes along the lines of the Draka in Sm Stirling fiction, the master race. That's where that path ends up. If the Palestinians did not have the Jews, they would have to create an enemy equal in stature. But to Muslims, the entire world is their enemy, something to be subjugated. It teaches humans a valuable lesson, of how to subjugate others. It does not teach them how to develop virtue, internal self control, or anything else all that useful.

The problem with feudalism was social mobility and the ability for individuals to change and improve themselves. Not everyone was going to end up a duke or king or something else higher up. So where does that leave the rest except with a loyalty to ethnicity or cultural/religious fervor.

Citizens and "serfs"[edit]Citizens, who are free and can vote, comprise only a small fraction of the Domination's population. Over 90% of the population are slaves. When the United Kingdom and most of the British Empire abolish slavery during the 1830s, the Draka avoid emancipation by labeling their slaves "serfs". At first, serfs are officially debt laborers who can earn their freedom, but this is a feeble legal fiction. This pretense is dropped when the Draka withdraw from the Empire, but the word "serf" remains the standard term. Serfs have no rights, and are not allowed to handle money. Their testimony is inadmissible in any court. Any child born to a serf mother is a serf. (Sex between a male serf and a female Draka is a capital offense for both parties.)

At first serfs are all African blacks, and Draka citizenship is open to all whites although Nordic, Anglo Saxon and Celtic types are especially welcomed. Because Draka expansion is based solely on enslaving conquered peoples, they soon have serfs from other races, including whites. Wiki Domination

I read that story years before I ever began reading original sources from pre Civil War I South.

Which those on the political Right, be they religious or be they secular, consider nonsense.

Gringo :

It's a matter of hierarchy, rightful chain of command. If a person orders you to do A, whether you obey or not might very well depend upon which line of authority that person comes from. A US Marine may fire when ordered to do so, but what if Jane Fonda told him to fire on a friendly or on the US President on some civilian or on some internal dissident accused of being a traitor? Would they Obey? It's the same thing, shooting people, what difference does it make.

To some people, where the orders come from, makes a huge difference. That's why the Left and Islam hates and fears Christians. Christians don't take orders from Leftist sex rapists or Mohammedan slave raiders. That's a big problem when your entire "civilization" is built on the back of slaves and serfs. The nail that sticks out, needs to be hammered flat. That's how they gain control.

but there was not unanimity among the Jacksonians as a movement on this point.

I don't see them as a movement, especially a political one. They are closer to a culture, an ethnicity, or a personality cult.

Trying to make them into more than what they are, is what the usual sorts do, like Mead and Hussein. Creating constructed operations, false flags, in order to "gin" something up for their own benefit.

It's convenient Andrew Jackson and his family are dead, otherwise it might get in the way of the "narrative". The same way the Left used the "narrative" about Iraqi war casualties and their families in the States, for Leftist engineering purposes. The dead are also useful to Democrats, since they can be used to get more Democrat votes in, especially for Chicago.

As for creating a firewall to prevent your cultural upbringing's prejudices from distorting your judgment and allowing you to be manipulated like a puppet by the Left's mind control specialist, first learn a different language from a different culture, and use it to cross reference/check/virus scan/firewall/virtual OS your responses.

It cannot be done from inside the cultural imperative of your own upbringing. The neurological connections are too tied to the emotional cores. Learning logic, isn't going to resolve that issue, since emotions are subtle. They can corrupt the thoughts of the logic core without it being noticed.

While it isn't impossible to objectively look at your own culture and homeland's actions and consequences, factually it has taken others quite a long time. They run through a number of rationalizations and justifications. It's just energy inefficient, as well as time inefficient. It is far easier to construct an artificial thought process using a different matrix. The way stroke victims sometimes have to rewire past the damage speech centers.

All of this is nothing new to people who have studied psychological weapons and the Left's mind control techniques. They would have created counters and defenses, some time ago. This is not something you just "leave alone" for a New Year's resolution kind of deal.

Grim, Well said. I only post this comment to congratulate you on great arguments I could not have made better myself. I particularly liked your point about tastes and being prepared to identify when someone is trying to manipulate you through an appeal to your tastes. You guys always have the best discussions when I am not paying attention.

From what I have seen, religiously oriented persons tend to be more humble than secularly oriented persons. Awe before a Supreme Being tends to produce humility. By comparison, many secular persons are in awe of only themselves. That doesn't produce humility.

I have always seen a sense of humility to be the chief goal of religion.

I believe in God, but am not good at going to church. Part of this I can blame on moving so often. Part of it on my personal issues with authority (God's authority, being told what to do, etc.).

But the most moving part of church (the Episcopal eucharist or communion service) for me is well summarized by these lines from one of my favorite prayers - know as the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy...

I've spent a lifetime fidgeting in church, daydreaming, shooting spit balls at the row in front of me in choir.

But those lines - well, I always get a little shiver down my spine when I say them.

We once had a mission priest who referred to those lines as "an abomination" because (he thought) they "make people feel bad about themselves". I always thought that was kind of the point: a reminder that there are higher standards than those our peers impose upon us (or we impose upon ourselves). And by those standards, most of us are really not measuring up.

By the way, Ymar, do you realize that the Left already speaks a different language from the one with which I was raised? They certainly can't speak my language. It's English in both cases, to be sure. But you couldn't find one of the people you worry about engaging in 'mind control' who could come down here and talk in a way that would sound like ordinary speech to ordinary people.

To even understand what they're talking about requires years of education. But the sense of it being a foreign tongue never goes away.

I can read French and Spanish as well, and increasingly Portuguese thanks to a friend of mine from Brazil. I often read international news to see different perspectives on American actions abroad. Still, I think you overestimate their ability to speak to ordinary American subcultures -- and underestimate the degree to which their intense conceptual framework has divided them linguistically from many ordinary Americans.

The part of the liturgy that brings me up short is "Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal." Humility is important, but so is a reminder that we are called to be heroic.

"But those lines - well, I always get a little shiver down my spine when I say them."

For me, at Mass (RC), it's "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.". I mean them more than any other response at mass, that line never passes my lips as a rote incantation.

I don't know what I think of all the talk of Jacksonians, or Haidt, etc.

But I would like to reply to something Cass said: It's easy to rally people with non-specific, emotional images.

You are right, but I think this can be interpreted another way. Instead of being used to gin up some kind of group sentiment, it's possible the images are instead genuine expressions of sentiment coming out of an already existing group. In that case, they are not to rally anyone, but to say, "Here I am, this is what I believe."

On the image of Washington, while its true many of the Founding Fathers were career politicians, and in many ways represented the colonial establishment of their day, they were also outlaws by being traitors to their king, and they really were angry extremists who refused to submit to the Crown's oppressive rule. None of them were just career politicians.

Also, we discussed the article "The One Weird Trait that Predicts Whether You're a Trump Supporter" here about three weeks ago. It's actually by a poli sci Ph.D. student, but he used a psychological test to determine how authoritarian individuals were. I'm glad to see Haidt had a similar objection to that test: Wanting obedient children isn't the same as being a political authoritarian.

For me, at Mass (RC), it's "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.". I mean them more than any other response at mass, that line never passes my lips as a rote incantation.

Douglas, I looked up the Wiki on the Prayer of Humble Access and found this:

In the 1979 Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America the Prayer of Humble Access is an option after the fraction anthem in the Rite I (traditional language) eucharistic rite but not in the (contemporary-language) Rite II service. There is some similarity with the prayer immediately prior to communion in the Roman Rite Mass: Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum: sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea (translated: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed".

I learn something new every day! I know I've heard those words before (probably at mass), and I agree: they are beautiful.

Tex, I had never heard the lines you quoted, but like Douglas, think they'd be a good addition. The Episcopal services both focus pretty heavily on grace. After communion, there is a call to go forth and serve God but it is notably a more passive call (the emphasis seems to be more on needing God's help to find the strength to be better people).

By the way, Ymar, do you realize that the Left already speaks a different language from the one with which I was raised? They certainly can't speak my language. It's English in both cases, to be sure. But you couldn't find one of the people you worry about engaging in 'mind control' who could come down here and talk in a way that would sound like ordinary speech to ordinary people.

You're not the target audience. It's the kids, who you often thought were whining about non existent problems. Since after all, in your school days, Grim, you had knives and fists to fight against bullies and mind control specialists. But your time and day is over by now. Has been for some time.

The defenses of high school and below, are zip, zero, zilch to Leftist mental domination. That is their speech and language centers, which controls thoughts, that the Left has been targeting. It was the job of the Democrat party to deal with adult whites and their views, which collapsed when Reagan pulled Democrats off the South, for the most part.

As for your language, Grim, and specifically the Southern fashion, the Left spoke it back when Margaret Sanger's eugenics was around. The KKK and the Democrats spoke it back when they were funded and levy raised by the likes of Robert KKk Byrd, the highest powers in the land. So yes, you might get some modern defenses against the Left's modern mental techniques, by adopting an old Southern fashion and dialect. But that only makes you more vulnerable to Democrat engineered weapons, even if it makes you resistant to modern Leftist ones.

The situation is contaminated. Understanding the Left's weapons and using them against the Left, will provide more offensive options.

If the Leftist alliance truly wanted control of Grim's Scots Irish clan regions in Georgia and elsewhere, they wouldn't come down directly. They would subvert a known quality, like Jim Webb, pull his strings, and make him speak to his people and supporters. Just like the "Black Caucus" does on blacks in inner cities.

Blacks indoctrinated well in the US, have as much reason to hate outsiders as the Scots Irish do. Yet they are kept under good controls, aren't they. They think they are free, because blacks represents them. But those blacks are just sell outs, collaborators, slave traders and overseers for the white Leftist overlords.

I surmise the strategic leaders of the Leftist alliance, no longer wish to deal with the Scots Irish clans or the other difficult white tribes. But it is well within their power to subvert any group of Western origins if they so chose. Blacks and latinos are a sub culture. It does not make them immune.

My estimation of the Leftist alliance's capabilities are on my own judgment, nobody else's. When you think the Left is so crude that they have to talk to you in your "dialect" to subvert you, you show how limited your understanding of subversion is, Grim. When you attempted to contrast current day's school kiddies and their problems with your own, unable to connect it with Leftist subversion and indoctrination, that also showed how you look at the problem (occurred pre 2010). Which is very different from what I've done vis a vis the Leftist alliance.

To understand an enemy is not about learning to recognize habits or traits such as abstract or book learning. To understand the enemy is to learn how to utilize the same attacks and techniques as the enemy. Just as a person going to Valley Forge or another area where they seem like they speak English but actually it's a different dialect, would have to live amongst them and live their lifestyle, to actually think in that dialect. This isn't an OS installing a new language pack that lets you see another language. This is another OS entirely. To put it in the physical context, archery and horsemanship are not the same thing, but you can stack them together to form a new thing.